The Redemption Engine
by McJunker
Summary: A murderer seeks redemption while in the custody of the Others.


It's always dark here. My eyes have adjusted pretty good, and I can see into the corners in case of rats, but I'm scared of what will happen when I see daylight again.

Hiroshima sunrise. Daggers of pure, bright agony entering my eyes. Jamming palms into my eye sockets and clutching my own forehead to keep my hands between the light and me. Not looking forward to that again.

Optimistic, that I'll ever see daylight.

I'm naked, but I stopped caring a while ago. Don't know how long, exactly. At some point I realized everyone here has seen my genitals, so I just stopped caring.

Once a day, he comes for me. When he's gone, I think that this must be tedious for him. Interrogating the same guy every day and never getting a response. Asking the same questions and getting the same anwsers- "I don't know, I don't know, I don't know." When he's here, I cringe and squirm and puke and bleed. And I don't tell him anything. After he's done, he tosses my body in the pool and let me sink to the bottom.

I hit the water bruised, bleeding, broken. Sometimes I'm at death's door. I come out dripping wet, whole and well. Not even a scratch.

Magic. In this day and age. The dark man is a man of his word. He said that I'd survive anything. That the Island wasn't done with me yet. That I could slash my wrists and swallow broken glass and put a bullet in my head and I'd still be alive.

Destiny. It was always my destiny. I get that now.

* * *

I have long hours here in the dark. Often, I think about the woman I murdered for money.

In the old days, Vikings had a special tactic for ambushing their enemies. They'd steal through the frozen night towards whatever family they were feuding with on the night that their rivals were feasting. They would surround the great wooden halls and wait in the cold, gripping axes and swords and bows, then they would would then set the building aflame. Still drunk, disoriented, smoke-blinded, and usually unarmed, the intended targets would be easy meat for cold steel.

It works in the modern day, too.

My business partner had a wife. Beautiful, soft brown hair. A round, friendly face. A body still slim and attractive despite the fact that she was coming up on forty. A certain unhappiness with her life, resulting in a desire for a divorce. A $500,000 dollar life insurance policy.

My partner knew that suspicion would fall on him at once. I agreed with his assessment- who hasn't watched Law and Order and CSI these days? A wife about to leave her husband who gets murdered, and a half million dollars for the taking? I would pass under the police's radar. We agreed to split the take. He made sure he was on the other side of town shopping with traceable credit card when I doused the front and back doors of his house with paraffin (with fire insurance, the take bounced up $200,000, but my partner couldn't guarantee me we'd see any of it. The insurance company might refuse to pay out in the event of arson).

She ran screaming and gasping from the kitchen door, the only exit not blazing. I had brought a prybar with me and pummeled her head in. I hit her pretty hard. I don't know if she was still alive when I reopened the kitchen door and shoved her back into the inferno, but either way she never felt the fire. I tossed in the half-full can of paraffin into the kitchen and ran before the fire's growth exploded.

I wasn't being cruel, putting her back in the fire. I was erasing evidence. The headwounds would be removed. My fingerprints, removed. I wasn't being cruel, I was being efficient.

I honestly thought that murder would be easy. I was ex-Army, for God's sake. I'd killed before. There were two dead men in Afghanistan who could attest to that, if they could only speak. But it turns out there's a difference between shooting at insurgents and this. I mean, I'd known her pretty well. She'd played hostess to my guest. When I went out to Japan on business, I'd return with Hello Kitty themed playing cards for her, because I knew she liked that stuff. She drank a little too much on weekends, and enjoyed badminton, and devoured Tom Clancy novels, and never ate meat.

She was my friend, and I had set her on fire.

Commiting the murder was as easy as I'd believed. Living with it afterwards was impossible.

* * *

"Where did you meet the man in black?"

"I don't know who you're talking about."

The Japanese man set a thin, strong hand on top of mine, and seized my little finger.

"Did you speak to him?"

"I don't know what you talking about."

And with a fiery flood of agony he bent my finger to the side, snapping it. I screamed.

"Did he say anything to you? Anything at all?"

"I don't know what... I don't know what you're talking about."

The Japanese man stomped once, with practiced skill. Sharp pain from a broken toe mingled with the broken finger. I screamed again.

"Why did you come to the Temple?"

"I don't even know where I am."

"Did he send you here?"

"I don't know who the man in black is."

The Japanese man hit me on the side of the jaw, putting his whole weight behind it, from his heels to his neck. I tried shifting in the chair to move with the blow, but the rope was too tight to allow much movement. I saw stars, burning brightly against the black of the cell. I couldn't even really see the Japanese man in any detail beyond a silhouette. Only the language we were speaking told me his nationality.

"Tell us where on the Island you first met the man in black."

"I don't know who you're talking about."

"He's a liar. He's a murderer. I don't know what he told you to do, but it would end badly for you if you succeeded in your task."

So what? Liar, murderer. Birds of a feather flock together.

"What did he tell you to do?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

The Japanese man slapped my broken finger. I screamed and struggled against the ropes, failing to even loosen them.

"How did you arrive at this Island?"

"I don't even know where I am."

And the pain continued.

* * *

After I murdered her, I went a little crazy. I'd never had money before, not real money. I did alright for myself with my business, but it would never make me rich. And I hadn't budgeted for an extra $250,000. I could go anywhere, do anything. With that kind of money, I had no rules. I spent the next half a year taking flights around the world and debauching like a superstar.

I had whores in Dublin, coke and heroin in London, whores and cocaine in New York, LSD and vodka mixers in St. Petersburg, whores and heroin in Bangkok. And so on. I gambled in Dubai, and won big- $34,000 on one hand of Blackjack, and was dealt two aces. I split and got 21 on both. That fuled my lifestyle for another three months.

I wound up in Oahu, Hawaii, with a massive hangover from the vodka I couldn't buy anymore, and shakes and shivers from the drugs that had stopped coming. I found I had lint in my pocket, and $200 in my bank account. My clothes both looked and smelled like I'd been sleeping in them for weeks. For all I know, I may have been.

I'd spilled my partner's wife's blood and shoved her into a bonfire, and all I had to show for it was pukestains and a lot of hazy memories.

I spent the last of my money at a strip joint that I dimly remembered would give out happy endings in the back. Self-destruction was a hard drug to kick. Two hours later, I was back on the street.

The sun was too bright. The day was too cold. The concrete was too hard to walk on without hurting the soles of my feet. The salt in the air made me sick. I walked around the tourist district aimlessly, hunched over in case I threw up again. The tourists were all fat and loud and dressed in their stupidly bright vacation colors, and they all went out of their way to avoid me. I found a payphone and I called my partner collect.

I found out he'd invested his money into some new company that produced equipment that did something tricky with computers. Something about making making the circuitry heat resistant, he wasn't clear on the specifics. He'd purchased thousands of shares on spec just before new government regulations required computer manufacturers to up the standards of computer durability. He'd bought his shares at $12 a pop, and they were now worth over $750, and rising a little more everyday. He had a new home in San Francisco and was dating again.

I asked him to wire me the money to fly home again. I was angling to come back to work the company with him again, but didn't want to ask directly. He might want to know what I'd been doing all this time. He told me not to worry about the plane ticket, he had his own private plane in Hawaii right now for maintenance, that he'd send someone to pick me up, and where was I?

I think God finally noticed me, and what I'd done. The plane crashed in the middle of the Pacific ocean from engine failure. I guess my partner had been so anxious to get me home that he'd rushed the repairwork.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

* * *

The pool is warm. The pool's water is thick and almost like jelly, I wave my arms around like a ninja and there's more resistance than there should have been. The bubbles are blinding and at the same time, kind of comforting.

The water's in my lungs and I don't mind. It's nothing I haven't done before.

While I'm in the water, I have time to think. And unlike my cell under the Temple, I have a mind to think with. I'm me again.

I think back to the old days, back in Wardak, Afghanistan. I was manning the machine gun at a traffic control point, when a pickup truck sped up and tried to rush through, almost running over the guys on the ground. I pumped about thirty 50. cal rounds through the windshield and engine block. After we checked the truck and bagged the pieces of the driver and his buddy, we found ten AKs and about 300 pounds of homemade explosive wrapped up in plastic baggies in the back of the truck under a tarp. No collateral damage, none of us hurt.

I decided I felt pretty good about that. That was my big moment, my shining glory. If some sniper could have popped me in the back of my head two seconds after we found the contraband, I could have ended my life on a high note.

I thought back to the women whose only offense was marrying a yuppie sociopath, and befriending a murderer. I remembered the heat baking into my back as I ran away from the collapsing house. Right up to the point where I'd hit her in the forehead, she'd trusted me. She was crying with relief, hugging me, glad I was on the spot to hold her after her escape.

Well, that's why I'm here. Murderer, liar. Redemption. The only thing I wanted to have before I died. But like the dark man said, redemption isn't something you possess. It's something you do.

* * *

"Where did you meet the man in black?"

"I don't know who you're talking about."

The Japanese man hit me in the stomach. He's been focusing on my midsection tonday, and my organs couldn't take much more before I'd have to go to the pool again.

"Did you meet a black mist?"

"I don't know anything about a black mist."

"How did you arrive to the Island?"

"I don't even know where I am."

"Did you choose to come here?"

"I don't know. I don't think so."

"What did the man in black want you to do?"

"I don't even know who that is."

The Japanese man hammered into my belly again, and again, and again. I jerk my head down trying and failing to curl up, but of course I couldn't. Tears were soaking my face and I thought I was going to die. But of course, I couldn't die, not yet. I could slash my wrists and eat broken glass and put a bullet in my head, and I still wouldn't die. Not until the Island was done with me. Not until I'd done my redemption.

"What did the man in black offer you to come here?"

"I had some pretty crazy experiences before you all chained me up in here. Lot of mystical stuff going on on this Island. I saw a dead woman running around the jungle the first night I was here. She told me things. Things that I needed to hear."

Silence. I think the Japanese man was a little shocked.

"Do you know what this Island is?" I asked. "Because I worked it out. It's an engine. An engine made of sand, and trees, and waterfalls, and old ruins, and magic. It an engine designed to do one thing and one thing only. To save souls and restore lives. It's a redemption engine. And anyone that needs it, they get drawn here like a magnet and forced into a journey that results in redemption."

The Japanese man remains silent. There is no silence quite like an Oriental silence.

"But it's not automatic," I said. "You have to do everything right. You have to do the right thing, at the right time, for the right reasons. Not everyone will pull it off. But everyone has a fair shot at it. And when you've run your life and your soul into the ground back in the real world... well, a fair shot is a good deal."

"What did the man in black tell you would earn redemption?" the Japanese man asked hoarsely. He sounded like a child asking his mommy about the monster under the bed.

"I was to deliver a message. A warning. To you specifically, unless there's another Japanese man in your group."

"Deliver it."

"He said that they are coming. Soon. And that three of them are already his."

Another silence.

"I don't know what it means," I said. "I was told to wait thirty days and then deliver the message word for word."

"That's not possible. He can't have reached them so soon. Jacob wouldn't have allowed that."

"Like I said, I don't know what it means. But message delivered. Right thing, right time, right reason."

I coughed up blood trying to laugh. It dribbled down my chin onto my bare chest.

"It doesn't really matter," I gasp. "Either you'll act on this information, in which case you'll just be doing what he expected you to do. Or you'll ignore it, and ignore the threat until it's too late. The second you heard my message, your team lost. Do whatever you want to me. I'm good. I'm done here."

The Japanese man hissed once, like an angry cat. "You should never have talked to him. He's the devil."

I heard the barest rustle of sound as he removed a handgun from his vest. Even in the dark, I could see the gun's shape.

"Thank you," I whispered, and damned if I didn't actually mean it.


End file.
